Acquired Savants

It's an interesting fact that severe brain injuries rarely, but sometimes, reveal remarkable talents in people that they never had before. The Atlantic has an interesting article thinking about the problems that fact raises.

Let me just note, though, that these problems disappear if you adopt the view of consciousness that I have sometimes advocated here. If consciousness is received by the brain rather than produced by it, an adjustment to the brain will receive a different part of the signal. Think of an old television set, when we used to broadcast TV through the air. The whole of television was in the signal, invisible, impossible to notice without a system that was structured in just the right way.

With such a system, though, you would find yourself watching a baseball game. But that wasn't the whole of the signal: retune the receiver, and you'd be watching a Western or a soap opera. All of it was there: it was how you tuned the receiver that determined what you got.

By the same token, if you gave the TV a good whack, sometimes you'd find that the signal became rather fuzzy. But sometimes it would improve! Sometimes it was just that whack that would bring the picture into extraordinary focus.

Of course, whack it hard enough and you might end up trying to show two programs at once; or, in fact, you might break the mechanism that was capable of receiving the signal. In that case you'd end up with a piece of junk that was once a television, a physical object now insensitive to the invisible signal in the air.

If that's the way consciousness works -- that is, if there is a unitary consciousness that our individual minds express individually because we are uniquely tuned to it -- then this phenomenon is no surprise at all. Make a significant adjustment to the manner in which the brain is tuned, and you will receive a different part of the signal.

10 comments:

Is there a logic that established that it should be a unitary consciousness that's being tuned in to? Couldn't it be individual consciousnesses remote from the physical 'tuner'? To use your television analogy, the different signals come from different stations/networks. Individuals, if you will.

I think the genetic memory idea in the article is questionable. Even with all the information that's in our genes, it doesn't seem like there is enough to also transmit skills like classical piano playing.

There is a logic, douglas, but we'd only just gotten part way through it. I need to get back to the subject.

But here's something we touched on this week, in the comments to this post: what does it mean for a thing to be a unity? For physical objects, it never means that they are indivisible -- even if they are practically indivisible, you can still speak of their beginning and end.

Rather, it seems to mean that they are unified by a common order -- what the ancients called "form," although there is some variation in how they used the term. I was telling Joe that I think the useful debate is trying to figure out how different kinds of forms are sustained in nature.

Some of them are internal to the thing: the parts of a horse make up 'one horse' because they are all ordered and structured by the DNA that puts them in order. So that's one kind of order (which happens to be the kind of form Aristotle talks about).

There's another kind, though, which is clearly not internal to the thing. Certain things, like gravity, are what we usually call "laws of nature." They appear to affect everything at all places and times. Thus, the order of gravity cannot be part of the thing; it must be sustained by nature in some other fashion.

There's an interesting question about where the laws of nature are written, in other words -- written in a metaphorical sense, but in the way that the law ordering you as a human could be said to be 'written' in your DNA. Wherever it is, since these laws appear to be universal, the place of writing must be in some manner that is the same everywhere.

One possibility is that the universe is a single object, when viewed at a higher dimension. In this case, there could be one law that naturally is expressed everywhere. (In this case, the order is part of the thing after all -- our mistake was in thinking that the universe was 'really' divisible into many times and places.)

The other possibility is that there is something about every time and place that carries the same law. But in this case, too, it turns out we are talking about 'one thing.' This kind of common order, present in all parts, is just what makes the parts of the horse 'one horse.'

So either way, the universe appears to be a single whole.

Now, go back and read the comments about how 'good' appears to be a kind of transcendent order just as 'unity' does. 'Good' appears to require consciousness, though, in a way that gravity does not. That suggests that there is a basic order within consciousness, too.

That's not the main proof; but it's another proof that seems to lead to the same place.

If that's the way consciousness works -- that is, if there is a unitary consciousness that our individual minds express individually...then this phenomenon is no surprise at all.

Oh, yes it is. You can concoct a cunning explanation for just about anything with that model - but no one, given only your view on consciousness, would predict these acquired-savants or anything like them.

The article itself describes what appears to be going in the subjects' physical brains. Part of the tissue is damaged; in the brain's efforts to adjust to circumstances, it recruits other parts of the physical brain. The brain has its limits, and stretching one part to its limits can come at the expense of another part. This fits the article I linked recently at Not Exactly Rocket science - where cab drivers learning "the knowledge" of routes in London by heart greatly increase one part of the brain, but they sacrifice some mental flexibility, and the ability to add new routes on top of this knowledge.

You could, I suppose, claim that a knowledge of London cab routes is part of a "universal consciousness" and that by memorizing them they tap into it and somehow have a harder time tapping into the universal consciousness of new routes...but how much more logical is it to conclude that they are learning cab routes from the streets of London, not the Akashik Records, and doing so with a physical organ that has a limited capacity.

(This "genetic memory" idea would be something else again - it would revive Lamarckism - but I haven't seen evidence for that. Some of us need lessons to learn an instrument; some really can pick it up "by ear," but that doesn't mean they're remembering their ancestors' music lessons.)

Well, now, I'm not sure what you mean by "prediction." The model predicts that retuning the brain -- by altering its size, shape or function -- ought to produce a change in the experience of consciousness, like retuning a TV alters how the television waves are deciphered.

Remember a few weeks ago, we said that you must potentially know everything that you could actually know. That statement is really just an analysis of what the terms "actual" and "potential" mean; it's almost an empty claim, since it doesn't tell you anything about what you know.

But here's an interesting way of cashing it out. My brain is such that I could potentially know what London cab drivers know -- but to know it, I'd need to retune the brain accordingly. Experience is one way of making the necessary changes in the brain so that the knowledge becomes actual: and indeed, this is just what Aristotle thinks ought to make it actual. He thinks your potential is only actualized when it comes into contact with an actuality (for example, the actual streets).

So one thing this model would predict is that -- if I fully understood the brain structures that exist, and had the tools to safely reshape my brain in just these ways -- I could actualize that knowledge without ever visiting the streets. I would simply need to tune my brain exactly the way his was tuned. (Here, the actuality I'm encountering isn't 'the actual streets,' but 'his actual brain' that is my model.)

Ultimately the model is similar to what Plato suggests in the Meno, i.e., that knowledge is a sort of recollection of things we already know from something like a previous life. We already know -- potentially. We just have to sort out how to actualize our knowledge.

By the way, thanks for commenting on this. I've been waiting since Saturday to hear what you'd say about it; I've been enjoying our conversations on this subject very much.

I was thinking about it again when I read this Belmont Club post which deals with things that are -- in some sense -- unknowable. Did Mohammed actually exist? Was the bombing of Nazi Germany effective? Etc.

He writes:

At the moment I am reading Leonard Susskind’s The Black Hole War. It is an account of how Leonard Susskind and Gerard t’Hooft contended with Stephen Hawking over the question of whether information can be destroyed. The book “is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking’s revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t’Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space.”

That's an interesting claim for the book to make. I understand there's something like a test for that currently being done by physicists.

To explain consciousness, though, is still going to be hard. A materialist explanation needs for the brain either to produce or to receive consciousness, because there's nothing 'else' to do it -- no mind or soul, just a brain. It's also going to have to explain knowledge, for that reason, in terms of this material relationship.

One way of doing it is to note that, in a hologram, the whole image is in every 'piece.' Thus, you do potentially know everything you could actually know, because you're a part of the hologram. It's all there; we just have to actualize it.

Of course, as you note, the brain has limits. There may not turn out to be all that many things we can actually know. If we can't be sure about bombing Nazi Germany, there's a lot we can never be sure about.

Thank you for your kind words. It's a topsy-turvy time for me but I am grateful for you and for this place.

Ultimately the model is similar to what Plato suggests in the Meno, i.e., that knowledge is a sort of recollection of things we already know from something like a previous life.

Plato's argument in the Meno is based on a very simple logical error, a false dichotomy. Socrates has just led an educated slave to deduce that his original ideas in geometry were wrong. And the dialogue goes something like this -

Socrates - He was never taught the knowledge; I didn't tell him the answers.

Meno - Right.

Socrates - But he has it now.

Meno - Right.

Socrates - And knowledge which is not taught is recollection.

Meno - Right.

False dichotomy. He doesn't consider the possibility that a person could figure things out by a process other than remembering the answers - that he could piece the answers together using his own mind and the information he now has. Yet if you admit that possibility, the argument falls to pieces (as does his argument for the immortal soul in the Phaedo, which rests on this completely).

So one thing this model would predict is that -- if I fully understood the brain structures that exist, and had the tools to safely reshape my brain in just these ways -- I could actualize that knowledge without ever visiting the streets. I would simply need to tune my brain exactly the way his was tuned. (Here, the actuality I'm encountering isn't 'the actual streets,' but 'his actual brain' that is my model.)

But that is true in a completely materialist model as well. I remember James Hogan's The Multiplex Man in which the test subjects get knowledge and skills that way - by having their minds overlaid with experiences other people actually had. Theoretically possible, whether it's shared consciousness or a material brain.

...but the point is, if the material brain can do all these things (and we're increasingly learning how though we're not all the way there)...then is there something left that humans can do that you'd need a shared consciousness to explain?

I can't comment on and have no understanding of the Susskind-Hawking business. But I would be very careful about drawing serious conclusions from popular accounts of physics. I have studied thermodynamics, the second law included, and when it gets into popular discourse - it's almost never used well.

If we can't be sure about bombing Nazi Germany, there's a lot we can never be sure about.

That's for sure, and grand strategy is one of those areas where it's particularly hard - even though (or perhaps "especially because"?) we're dealing with other humans like ourselves.

But that's just what I'm telling you: I'm offering you a materialist reading of the model I propose. (Well, hylomorphic: but you can't get away from form as per our last discussion, because organization is the only thing that explains why there are apparently different kinds of matter/energy.)

What we need to explain is just what we've touched on before: how is it that I can (a) obtain knowledge by experience, and (b) communicate it to you? We talked about (a) at length re: Kant and so forth, and came to an understanding of how we can be sure that we do gain knowledge from experience.

It seems that the answer to (b) has to do with the fact that I share an order with you: we are structured similarly enough that what counts for "actual knowledge" in me can be transferred to you in substantially the same form. Thus, you have the potential to know what I actually know; and if I succeed in conveying it to you, you will actually know it. We will be able to agree on what "it" is.

Now sharing an order is a sort of unity, as mentioned above. Our consciousness is the same -- is a unity -- at least insofar as it is structured according to the same order.

I first read about these things back in 2003, in this article about Aussie experiments involving magnetic waves. These are crude, and don't alter the physical matter, but just the operation of the current matter.

The results are interesting in that (a) they appear to arise reliably when you alter brain waves in certain ways, and (b) they go away when you turn it off.

Now, if all that was happening was that your brain was producing some individual consciousness, and individual knowledge, you'd expect to retain the skill. After all, you'd be building physical neural connections by practicing the drawing. Turn off the field, and the physical connections remain. You should be able to rewire your brain permanently in this fashion.

If I'm right, and it's about how your brain is 'tuned,' then the picture makes more sense. Of course you lose the ability when the tuning changes: knowledge of the ability is only a function of how your brain is tuned. Retune it, and you find that you have different kinds of knowledge (the ability to draw a cat is 'techne' knowledge, not 'episteme' knowledge, but knowledge all the same). Your knowledge was being actualized by the magnetic waves that were tuning your brain. That's all.

And that's why, with a severe enough head injury, you can get a complete change in a person's self-consciousness: they can become effectively different people. They've been retuned to a different part of the signal.

The Meno is actually worse than you remember. All Socrates really proves is that the slave boy is willing to agree with his assertions about the math. I cite it because it is a similar concept he had, not for the strength of the argument.